


cutting strings

by aholynight



Category: Druck | SKAM (Germany)
Genre: (but this is hella fluffy too i promise), Cuddling & Snuggling, Depression, Fluff, M/M, i am also completely obsessed with how they can swing between playful and then painfully soft, just getting all up in my feelings thinking about matteo/depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-10 21:34:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18416297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aholynight/pseuds/aholynight
Summary: "Matteo feels like a boat, unmoored. His engine cut. He can’t do anything but float and wait for the current to take him. The thing is, he often feels like that. Like he can’t control anything he does, or anything that is done to him. Like he is vulnerable to the whims of the sea. It can take him anywhere. It can toss him in a storm, it can thrash him between waves. It can drown him.But David doesn’t do any of that. He is a safe harbor."(Or, David wants to play Twenty Questions. Matteo finally starts to open himself up. Gives little pieces of himself, bit by bit.)





	cutting strings

“Twenty questions.”

Matteo watches light dance on the silver curve of David’s piercing. His eyelashes flutter; he hides a yawn in David’s shoulder. Matteo wants to keep his eyes open. He never wants to fall asleep. He wants to gaze upon David’s face forever—David’s face, like a painting in a gilded frame (maybe Matteo would care more about art if all art looked like David, if all art passed through David’s clever artist hands, David’s beautiful mind). But he is so comfortable with his head on David’s shoulder, his arms curled up between them, their legs tangled together.

“You look like you’re about to fall asleep,” David whispers, dragging his fingers through Matteo’s hair.

Matteo shivers. David seems to know exactly how to touch him. How to make Matteo melt, boneless. How does he always know?

“No,” Matteo whispers, “I can play your game.”

“You’ll answer?”

Matteo nods.

“Ok. Movie that scares you the most.”

“ _The Sound of Music_ ,” says Matteo.

David bursts out laughing, a beautiful, musical laugh that floats over Matteo like something material, something he can reach out and touch with his fingers.

“Don’t mock me,” says Matteo.

David lies on his side, hovering over Matteo. He tangles his fingers in the front of David’s shirt, tugging gently, wanting him closer, asking for a kiss. David’s head dips, his lips brushing Matteo’s. He can feel David start to grin against Matteo’s mouth.

“ _Doe, a deer, a female deer_ ,” David whisper-sings, and Matteo shoves him off of him, then starts to climb on top of David, covering his mouth.

David fights him off easily, still laughing, and pins Matteo to the bed.

“Ok, ok, ok,” says David. “How does the other one go? _Raindrops on roses, whispers on kittens_ —”

Matteo half-whines, half-laughs, fighting weakly as David continues to sing, before finally surrendering to the sheets, pink-cheeked. David looks beautiful likes this, fond and amused and smug, gazing down at Matteo.

“Give a serious answer,” says David. “This is Twenty Questions.”

Matteo points at his own deadpan expression. “That was my serious answer.”

David raises an eyebrow. “ _Matteo_.”

“ _David_ ,” Matteo repeats, mocking his tone.

“You’re such a little—” David tickles Matteo’s ribs, and Matteo half-screams, half-laughs, allowing David to wrestle him into the bed. David’s hair flops over his forehead, his cheeks flushed, looking so impossibly stunning that Matteo can’t help but pull him down into a kiss.

“You fight dirty,” says David, grinning, taking Matteo’s face in his hands and kissing him more thoroughly than before.

Matteo’s stomach dips. It’s almost too much: David looking at him like that, kissing him like that, touching him like that. Nobody’s ever looked at him like that before. Like they were actually _seeing_ him. David sees him. And he likes what he sees. That’s what wrecks Matteo the most. David looks at him like he’s something special; like Matteo’s worthy of being looked at _like that_.

Something must change on Matteo’s face, because David dips his head down again. He kisses Matteo so softly it almost _hurts_.

“What’s wrong?”

Matteo shakes his head. He can't talk. He lifts his chin again, as if begging for another kiss. David presses a kiss to Matteo’s bottom lip. Then the corner of his mouth. His cheek. Matteo’s throat bobs, helplessly. His eyes burn. He feels raw, and vulnerable, and open. Too open. Like a heart on a plate. Like an offering.

David kisses him again, impossibly gently. Matteo feels like a boat, unmoored. His engine cut. He can’t do anything but float and wait for the current to take him. The thing is, he often feels like that. Like he can’t control anything he does, or anything that is done to him. Like he is vulnerable to the whims of the sea. It can take him anywhere. It can toss him in a storm, it can thrash him between waves. It can drown him.

But David doesn’t do any of that. He is a safe harbor.

 

—

 

When Matteo was young, it seemed like his mother played _The Sound of Music_ every day.

It wasn’t true, of course. Even his mother had her limits. But it was her Sunday evening ritual to put it on after Church. Matteo remembers sitting on the floor—he liked sitting on the floor better than the couch, even then—listening to his mother sing along from the kitchen while she cooked dinner. Sometimes Matteo would sit on the counter and watch. He remembers her cutting up a tomato, spinning and singing, popping a piece into Matteo’s mouth, then cutting up another. He remembers her singing Edelweiss to him when he fell asleep—sometimes she even strummed along to her guitar as she sang.

But there was one scene Matteo hated. And every time it played he would wait it out in his bedroom, or the bathroom, or play outside in the yard until the scene was over.

“They’re just puppets,” Mama would coo, thumbing a tear from Matteo’s cheek. “That’s all. I think they’re sweet.”

Matteo shook his head. He hated their eyes. Dead, unseeing eyes. Doll’s eyes.

But that wasn’t what truly scared him. It was that they couldn’t really move. He hated the jerky dance of their limbs, their feeble choreography. He hated those _strings._ The puppets could do only what the children directed. Of course he only half-understood this fear as a child; all he knew was that every time he heard that music begin, an amorphous, chilling fog entered his chest. He could barely breathe.

And when he was older, he never stopped thinking about those puppets. When it felt like his life was dragging him by a leash, when he went to school, when he was brought to parties, when a sweet girl asked him to be her boyfriend. Like he was a sock at the end of some cruel arm, saying _yes_ without meaning it. When had he ever made a decision, a real decision, for himself?

Sometimes it felt like he was just a body, just tissue and organs and bones. It took ever muscle in his body just to feed himself, to drag himself from bed, to open his eyes. Like his body was something he was trapped in, and the real Matteo was waiting there, behind the eyes, banging at the door. Trapped. 

And then at some point, Matteo gave up. It was too hard to fight. It was easier to just move as the strings bid him to move. To sleep-walk through his own life.

And then a boy came along that made Matteo want to be _awake._

—

 

They order a pizza, plain cheese because Matteo doesn’t trust David’s topping choices after their cheese toast date. David puts on an old movie, something from the 70s, a comedy with a scientist called Frankenstein, like that book they assigned in Matteo’s English class that he never actually read. Matteo dozes in and out of sleep, comforted by the sound of David’s soft laughter, the way David’s shoulders sometimes shake when he’s amused, even if it jostles Matteo’s head. When the movie’s over David closes Matteo’s laptop and turns off the light.

Matteo feels David slide an arm over his waist, spooning him from behind. He wriggles back, wanting to feel David as closely as possible.

“Are you actually tired?” Matteo asks. “I’m sorry I keep falling asleep.”

He feels David kiss the back of his neck. “Don’t be sorry,” David whispers, his lips brushing Matteo’s ear.

The raw feeling returns. He is tossed into a wave, higher, higher. He could fall at any moment.

But he has David. David, who is so gentle with him.

Matteo inhales.

“When I, uh,” Matteo whispers, “when I was young, my mom used to put on the _Sound of Music_ every Sunday.”

David strokes a thumb over Matteo’s hip, listening.

Matteo exhales. He feels something inside him unspool. Like strings, cut.

He tells David his story.

**Author's Note:**

> y'all I don't know where this came from tbh but I've been thinking about Matteo a lot and what I (and many of us) believe to be his undiagnosed depression. Got me thinking about his childhood, his coping mechanisms, etc. This sad boy is really gonna kill me. And also David, who seems to be (and its early days still I know, god do I know) but seems like he's picking up that Matteo's not doing so well.
> 
> if you liked this, please consider leaving a comment I'd love to hear from y'all (and thanks so much to everyone who left feedback & kudos on my last fic, folks had me swooning for real)
> 
> i'm also on tumblr @aholynight, hmu if you want to chat druck / theories about upcoming hell weeks (dear god help us) / headcanons / maybe writing prompts? / just yell about our boys in general/ etc etc
> 
> <3


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